By Dr. Andrew Denison

The invasion has made it all too clear that Germany is too big, too rich, and too geo-strategically important to forgo influence, to opt out of the competition with Russia and China.

European security urgently needs German leadership in providing military capabilities, developing geostrategy, and mobilizing allies for this ongoing struggle.

More than Cooperation

Germany needs a new language to meet the challenge of competition. In the foreign policy section of the new German government´s coalition agreement, the word “cooperation” appears 29 times, the word “competition” only once. Even the word “conflict” appears only 9 times, but in the sense of “causes” and “resolution,” not in the sense of “persevere” or “win.” Historic Bundestag speeches on Sunday, 27 February gave an indication of where Germany needs to go.

Cooperation is important, but not sufficient. It is time for Germany to focus on strengthening its influence and competitiveness. Germany’s decisions are of utmost consequence not only for Germany but for the entire Western alliance. Europe’s ability to avoid military blackmail will increasingly depend on Germany wielding influence effectively.

In the face of aggression from Russia as well as from China, the Federal Republic finds itself in a new position – no longer that of 1989 but rather that of 1949, albeit with marked differences. In 1949, Germany stood as a defeated, divided country, increasingly exposed to the ever more aggressive Russians. Today, also unlike 1989, Germany stands as the largest, richest, most geo-strategically important country in Europe – and faces a global competition with Russia and China the likes of which the world has not seen since the hottest phases of the Cold War.

Germany Must Take a Stand

Without German leadership in the sense of skillful use of the levers of power, including military power, Europe, if not the entire West, is increasingly vulnerable to a broad-based, well-conceived offensive by authoritarian, even totalitarian, rivals. Without a competitive and influential Germany, the European Union and NATO will be challenged to counter the threat posed by Beijing and Moscow.

Germany did not seek this challenge, but now the country must face it – just as the United States was forced to confront Stalin and Moscow after World War II. Whether Germany likes it or not, Moscow like Beijing, sees Europe´s peace and prosperity as a potent danger to its system of rule. While Germany enjoys Europe´s open order like no other, German´s location and wealth have also made it the vital if not sufficiently influential keystone of this order.

Germany needs the strategy, the organization, and the sustainability to bring its political, economic, and military strengths to bear – but also to recognize its weaknesses and reduce them. Germany needs carefully considered resilience in all areas of competition.

Europe has rarely succeeded in keeping the peace and becoming the master of its own destiny.

A strategic and competitive Germany focused on strengthening its global role could change this.

This article is an English version of his German article published on the Transatlantic Networks website on February 18, 2022.

Dr. Denison is the Director of Transatlantic Networks.

Transatlantic Networks is a center for political education and consulting based in Koenigswinter, Germany. The center’s research focuses on the possibilities and limitations of a globalization of the Atlantic partnership.

We have a forthcoming interview with Dr. Deninson on the current situation facing Germany and Europe.

The featured graphic: credit: Bigstock

For an earlier interview, we did with him, see the following:

The Return of Direct European Defense: The German Challenge

By Robbin Laird

Recently, I had a chance to discuss the Ukraine crisis and its broader global context with Dr. Paul Bracken.

Bracken started the discussion by focusing on the structural change aspect of the crisis.

“The mainstream media focuses on the personalistic aspects of this conflict.

“It’s interesting how the  media goes with the line that Putin has lost it, or has borderline personality disorder.

“They simply can’t imagine anyone rationally “using” military power or nuclear weapons to get objectives met that they cannot or choose not to achieve any other way.

“We have moved beyond an era where the dichotomy between soft and hard power adequately described the structural conflict we now see. It is different now — and hard power is a key part of changing the rules of the game by the authoritarian powers.”

The question is then how does the West responds and how do we reshape the capabilities that make the United States globally competitive?

It is not just about having nuclear weapons in one box, conventional forces in another box, and having a free for all on domestic issues in another box.

Whether the United States is united or not, it faces a world where an ability to exercise blended soft and hard power and a willingness to directly deal with the military aggression of the peer competitors is part of the historical epoch we’re in. It is not about “leading from behind” or “building back better,” it is about remaining competitive.

For Bracken: “By “competitive” I mean having an economy and policies that generate jobs and wealth. This is key to U.S. strategic competitiveness.  Let me give one example going on right now. China sends people to Africa to do business, e.g. developing raw materials, road building, communications, etc. The United States sends in special ops teams. It’s quite a contrast.”

We then discussed precisely the shift in Western defense which is being recast with the inward looking focus of Western states.

As Bracken put it: “We need to consider a much wider band of scenarios and alternative futures than the United States has been willing to consider.

“We have focused largely on the global rule of law, on liberal democracies getting together and that we now have to consider that that will have to go outside of that space to consider scenarios which are more focused on an inward-looking world.

“In such a world, each country acts largely in its own interests rather than as some part of larger block. And I like that term, inward looking, because it’s relatively neutral, it doesn’t say populist or “neo-fascist,” or isolationist.  Nationalism, too, is a loaded term today.

“These terms, nationalist, isolationist, etc. are loaded words designed to produce an argument which would rebut national choices and policies. Each country is now looking at its own interests more and I think you see this with Europeans who are no longer just following the U.S. lead.

“So how to shape congruent decisions where possible?”

I underscored that the alliance realities are changing dramatically. My co-author and I argued in our European defense book that as nation’s were considering their direct defense, they were prioritizing working with like-minded states rather than simply plugging their capabilities into the wider NATO alliance, for example.

With a state like Poland playing in many ways the leading role in the response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, such a reality simply does not figure into the normal discourse by the EU about the rule of law “good states” or for the Biden Administration facing a country which simply opposes that Administration’s views on human sexuality.

Bracken noted that the impact of polarization in the United States is a significant part of the global change as well.

“We saw the perspective on many U.S. campuses that the threat is a return of the Third Reich, with Trump the new “Hitler.” But the reality is that the United States is becoming more like the Third Republic in France of the 1930s with its deep divisions, in effect, a conflict of extremes.

“We are seeing significant social chaos affecting our decision making. You have senior military openly political and partisan. These are retired officers but it’s not a healthy trend. The search for right wing subversives in the military indicates to me that the services risk losing their professionalism.

“The Third Republic analogy refers to crippling social divisions, as well as the political paralysis driven by the plethora of political parties in France in the 1930s. I recommend reading William L. Shirer’s book, The Collapse of Third Republic (1969). A key part of French paralysis was the incapacity of the military to act, which Shirer says came from an officer corps afraid of making decisions without considering politics. This environment produced a culture of indecisiveness in the French Army, most especially in the senior officer corps.

We discussed the need to re-think how to describe alliances of the liberal democracies and act on realistic expectations of what nations will do within a world of 21^st century authoritarians working to shape a way ahead to shape the global order to their advantage.

Bracken drew from his business school teaching experience: “Rather than a CEO role for the United States, we need to think in terms of an orchestra conductor model where you play off the different themes coming from the orchestra and play down others.”

In other words, we need to recognize that looser forms of coordination shaped by working with the nations is the core reality rather than a top-down alliance framework led by the United States.

We then turned to the nuclear weapons piece of the current crisis in Ukraine.

Nuclear weapons are part of any peer competitor rivalry, whether the United States recognizes it or not.

But we have certainly let our nuclear warfighting, diplomacy and deterrent skills deteriorate. Nuclear weapons are not in a separate box that’s marked “Please open in certain highly unusual and impossible to imagine situations.”

They are part of the entire context of the limited war strategies they are pursuing against the liberal democracies.

As Bracken noted: “Someone called me yesterday to ask if the Russians would actually use nuclear weapons.

“My response was “they already have.” It’s a nuclear head game, and very dangerous. The purpose of the Russian nuclear alert is to deter NATO from massing its forces against Belarus and Ukraine borders. And to signal that the U.S. had better not open up a big electronic warfare or cyber campaign to disrupt Russian Air Forces over Ukraine.

“A U.S. or NATO cyber campaign against distributed tactical nuclear and mobile missiles of Russia would manipulate the risk of escalation, which is why Putin ordered the alert.”

By Pierre Tran

Paris – “The fate of not only our state is being decided, but also what Europe will be like,” the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said Feb. 24.

Zelenskiy was addressing the nation on the day of the Russian early morning missile attacks on the East European nation, followed by assault on land, sea and air ordered by Russian president Vladimir Putin.

Ukraine was offering assault rifles and urged people in Kyiv to prepare Molotov cocktails, as Russian troops entered the northern suburbs the following day.

Zelenskiy’s remark raised questions on whether the Russian assault on a democratic sovereign state would bring change in the European architecture for security and defense, and what those reforms might be.

The Russian offensive raised a range of security issues, such as how to deal with energy dependence, Russian food supply, and the need to deal with cyber warfare.

On the military front, there might be questions on deployment of Nato troops and missiles in central Europe and the Baltic nations, members of the alliance.

“This changes everything,” Timothy Garton Ash, professor of European studies at Oxford University, said Feb. 24 on BBC Radio 4. “We have to fundamentally rethink how we approach Russia, how we approach European security, how we approach a larger global architecture.”

“Peace on our continent has been shattered,” Nato secretary general Jens Stoltenberg said Feb. 24.

While Ukraine was not in the transatlantic alliance, Nato was holding Feb. 25 an emergency virtual meeting of heads of state and government of the 30 member states, to decide how to respond to the Russian assault.

Food, Energy Security

On the broad security front, Putin ordered investment of $52 billion in Russian agriculture, to cut reliance on food imports, website La Tribune reported.

Russia effectively held a “food weapon,” said Henri Biès Peré, head of the FNSEA farmers union, with 18 percent of the world wheat market, the report said. By grabbing Ukraine, which held 12 percent, Moscow controlled a third of the world market.

The Western nations had banned food exports among sanctions, in response to Russia seizing the Crimea region, eastern Ukraine, in 2014. That prompted Russia to become a leading wheat exporter after previously relying on imports.

Russia was also self-sufficient in poultry and almost so in pork production, following investing in industrial farming.

With lower quality standards, Russia grabbed market share from French wheat producers, who had been market leaders in Algeria, Egypt, Morocco, and Turkey. Russia had also won a share in Asian markets.

That strategy had political significance, as those nations would not “bite the hand that feeds them,” and could be considered “natural allies,” the report said.

In energy, Europe relied on Russia for some 40 percent of natural gas, with Germany vulnerable due to a switch away from nuclear power and plans to abandon coal by 2030.

Berlin suspended Feb. 22 a controversial certification of the Russian Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, worth $11 billion, and U.S. sanctions include the main contractor on the pipeline, Nord Stream AG, a Swiss-registered company, a unit of the Russian energy giant Gazprom. The industrial partners on that Russian pipeline, which bypasses Ukraine, comprise the French state-owned company Engie, Shell, Austrian firm AMV, and German companies Unipo and Wintershall DEA, Reuters reported.

That German suspension was just for now, but raised the question how Europe, and in particular Berlin, would tackle long-term dependence on Moscow.

The use of energy as a weapon for power projection could be seen with the International Energy Authority accusing Moscow of cutting 25 percent of gas supply in recent winter months, fuelling price rises to record highs in Europe.

Win the Information War

The French chief of staff, Army Gen. Thierry Burkhard, told Oct. 1 reporters there was need “to win the war before the war begins.”

Burkhard, a paratrooper who was previously spokesman for a previous chief of staff, pointed up the need to tackle the information war, and to train the services for “high intensity warfare.”

The opponents spread false information in a time of competition, contestation, and confrontation, and it was no more peace, crisis, and war of former times, he said.

There was also need to adapt the services from the asymmetrical warfare on the Barkhane mission in the Sahel sub-Saharan region, he said, where French troops did not receive incoming artillery fire, and pilots did not fly against air defense systems.

Russian forces fired cruise missiles, flew fighter jets, and their troops seized or destroyed 80 military sites on the first day of the assault on Ukraine.

France to Send Weapons to Ukraine

“We are in contact with the Ukraine authorities to supply them with the defense equipment they need,” French president Emmanuel Macron said in a formal written address read out Feb. 25 for him to both houses of parliament.

France was making further commitments to Nato “to protect the territory of our Baltic and Romanian allies,” he said, and would bolster the fight against manipulation of information and cyber attacks from foreign powers.

Macron had earlier met former heads of state François Hollande and Nicolas Sarkozy before the solemn parliamentary address.

“The present crisis stems from the decision planned, decided and organized by Russia to invade Ukraine,” Macron said. France would adopt sanctions, which would have consequences for Russia and France.

The sanctions would show that Europe was not a union of consumers but a political project tied to values and principles held in common, he said.

“It is in this way the European Union must truly become a more sovereign power in energy, technology, and the military,” he said.

Ukraine would welcome delivery of weapons such as patrol boats, armored vehicles, and Caesar artillery, parliamentarian Jean-Charles Larsonneur told Feb. 23 the Association des Journalistes de Défense press club in a phone briefing.

Intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance missions were important and France flies ISR missions from Romania, he said. Larsonneur delivered a report on Ukraine to the defense committee of the lower house National Assembly.

France, since Jan. 1, is the lead nation in Nato’s very high readiness joint task force, set up in 2014 following Russia’s attack on Ukraine and Middle East crises.

In Nato’s enhanced forward presence, there are four multinational battalion-sized battle groups rotating through Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland. There is also a Nato multinational brigade based in Romania.

Macron told the Nato summit France will send in the next few weeks 500 troops to Romania as the “lead nation,” with other Nato partners free to deploy soldiers,  and also 200 troops to Estonia, alongside a British and Danish deployment, the spokesman for the armed forces ministry, Hervé Grandjean, told television channel BFM TV.

France was also as of Feb. 25 flying from France two air patrols a day, comprising two Rafale fighters and an A330 MRTT inflight refueling tanker in each patrol, he said, with the patrols flying on the eastern flank of Poland as part of a Nato air defense mission.

In mid-March the French air force will send four Mirage 2000-5 fighters to Estonia, with some 100 personnel, he said. These French deployments were intended as signs of “reassurance” to Nato members close to Ukraine.

Macron had discussed a fresh look at European security when he met Feb. 7 Putin in Moscow in a bid to “de-escalate” the crisis.

Macron spoke to Putin on the night of Feb. 24, with an exchange direct and brief, Le Monde reported.

Business Sanctions

The European Union, the U.K, and the U.S. were adopting a fresh batch of sanctions against Russia, which included freezing foreign accounts of Russian banks, suspending Aeroflot airline flights over Britain, and assets held by Russian parliamentarians and oligarchs close to Putin.

The Ukrainian foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, criticized the EU for declining to suspend the Swift system of interbank transfers for Russia.

“I will not be diplomatic on this,” he said on a social platform. “Everyone who now doubts whether Russia should be banned from Swift has to understand that the blood of innocent Ukrainian men, women and children will be on their hands too. BAN RUSSIA FROM SWIFT.”

Stock in Thales, an electronics company, was one of the rare shares which rose Feb. 24, when financial markets fell on concerns over the Russian invasion.

Thales had sales in Russia of less than one percent of total turnover, a spokesman said, with some 130 staff in that country. Some 100 personnel worked in the civilian digital, identity and security unit, which handled bank cards and SIM cards.

In aeronautics, Thales supplied cockpits for aircraft including the Sukhoi  Superjet 100 regional jet, and components for space projects.

Safran, which builds aero-engines, received half its titanium from the Russian company VSMPO, executive chairman Olivier Andriès said Feb. 24, reporter Vincent Lamigeon said on social media. The French company would speed up diversification of supply but was presently relying on VSMPO. Safran had built up its stock of titanium and had enough until autumn.

Rolls-Royce, a British engine maker, relied on Russia for 20 percent of its titanium and was also looking for other sources of supply, Reuters reported.

Dassault Aviation was understood to have sold the Falcon business jet in Russia but no details were available.

Rearming Europe?

A fresh debate on rearming Europe was likely, Mark Leonard, director of the European Council for Foreign Relations, said in a note Lessons for Europe from Munich Security Conference 2022. Such a discussion was all the more likely if Russia stored nuclear weapons in Belarus.

How Turkey would balance its ties to Russia and the West was one of the issues, he said, and what was the outlook for EU member state Hungary.

“European leaders coming out of the Munich Security Conference 2022 should focus on how to invent a new West in which they are less infantilised and can actively shape the new rules of engagement that will emerge from this crisis,” said Jana Puglierin, head the ECFR Berlin office and senior research fellow.

ODESSA, UKRAINE – 20 FEB 2022: Unity march in Odessa against Russian invasion. Man with placard about russian army

“Only Russian conscripts afraid of Russian army.”

Credit: Bigstock